WHAT DID RISE FROM A STEAMER TRUNK

WHAT DID RISE FROM A STEAMER TRUNK(L DOUGLAS ST OURS) WHAT DID RISE FROM A STEAMER TRUNK

The Nazis were pioneers in propagating the redundant pageantry of symbols so there were millions of swastika banners, bunting, and flags hanging all over Germany when dad marched in 1945.

I had a 21 month head start on my next oldest brother.
I was stronger and bigger and of course I could outrun and outfight him,
but the little guy had guts in situations that turned me timid yellow.
Where I'd retreat, he'd advance.
While caution was my obsession,
he'd throw caution to the wind,
Any obstacle I was afraid to scale,
he couldn't wait to climb.

Dad rummaged through the steamer trunk
that smelled like an heirloom in the cobwebbed attic.
Under a banded bundle of decaying correspondence,
he retrieved World War II relics - medals, campaign ribbons,
faded photos in which dad looked more like a young boy scout than an American soldier, crinkly and brown newspaper clippings, and an SS dagger which fired our imaginations.

The dagger poked at and set loose frayed memories.
Dad described how he pillaged it from the third floor of a Nazi official's ransacked house.
Rumor had it that a safe in there held plundered treasures, so he went along with a gang of other enlisted men, forced their way into the house, and rounded up and herded that Kraut and his family
into the bomb cratered wreckage of that occupied town.
The G.I.s located the safe but nothing they tried could bust open that strongbox not even point blank firing. So they dragged it up to the third floor and shoved it out of a shell shattered window.
It slammed into the rubble of that cobblestone street.
The impact dislodged the lock and the contents burst out
like fruit from a basket. But there was nothing intrinsically precious,
no money, no gems, and no gold bars. The men divided up the loot and dad ended up with that dagger
which he allowed me and my brothers to handle as gingerly as a crucifix.

Before dad closed the trunk, we spotted a brightly colored and neatly folded cloth with a tattered fringe.
Responding to our curiosity, dad carefully unfurled this flag broad enough to blanket the three of us.
In its center was a black swastika set in a white circle framed by a sheet of red.

Back then Mr. Hardiway's yard bordered the back of ours, no fence between our properties.
He was also a war veteran but unlike dad, he’d showboat his patriotism. Annually he demonstrated his devotion by driving an antique school bus, he refurbished himself, in the fourth of July parade
inviting us along as passengers.
As the sixties dawned, Mr. Hardiway spent a considerable sum to raise a thirty foot flag pole set and leveled solidly in cement.
And on every day it didn't snow or rain between sunrise and sunset
the star spangled banner waved over the land of the suburbs.

A few weeks hence on a lazy summer day,
I was sort of napping, just barely swinging
in Hardiway's hammock strung and hooked between two oaks.
Without any adult’s knowledge or permission
my younger brother snuck back into that trunk and dug out that Nazi flag.
He got Robert, my youngest brother, to help him carry the bad flag
to Mr. Hardiway's yard and together they drew down Old Glory.
They hitched up that infamous banner and raised it
over the neat lawns and brick and siding houses
of our lily white and gentile neighborhood.

My eyes were shut when seconds later
a bird nesting in one of those trees
dropped poop into my mouth.
Disgusted and spitting I looked into the blue sky
that was stabbed by the staff and that flag
and just then I thought I had descended into a nightmare
of the Third Reich positioned between our heaven and our homes.
That flag was visible for miles and being the oldest and the nearest to his wrath
I got an ear full of invective from Mr. Hardiway as my brothers bolted out of sight.

The war had been finished almost sixteen years the day my brother
resurrected that symbol of the vanquished and the evil.

by L DOUGLAS ST OURS May 2011